FAQ

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

As previously mentioned on this site, 2013 hasn't been a very good year
overall for established groups. However, the nugus were another story
with several decent groups (as well as a lot of crap ones) stepping up
to the plate, something which didn't escape my attention or the
attentions of other writers on Anti Kpop-Fangirl. Of course there was criticism for this:

I'd spend some time dissecting this docile mouth-breathing argument but there's no need as The Real CZ and Zaku both did a great job
and I have nothing to add. However, since covering shit nobody has
heard of instead of stuff from the same old established labels seems to
really hit a nerve with some folks, I thought it would be a good idea
for me to embrace the nugus and make a regular thing of it. So welcome
to:

(For
the boneheads - no, I'm not insinuating that T-ara are nugu - I just
think that this image looks cool and customs officers fits the theme of
being "on the alert" for stuff)

Nugu means "nobody" and is
basically used to describe k-pop artists that nobody gives a fuck
about. Each Nugu Alert post will therefore highlight some k-pop MVs
that few people have seen before, but which I think
you should take a look at... it might be because I like the songs, but
to be honest - that's highly unlikely. I'm probably highlighting it
for some other reason and each "Nugu Alert" MV will have at least one notable quality which I believe deserves your attention.

Some rules:

Must have less than 20,000 YouTube hits

Can be new or old

Might
not be technically new or unknown but certainly will be something I
haven't seen other k-pop fans discuss or care about, so try to fucking
control yourself if I link something that I don't know about but that
you've been following for the last 15 years and are breakthrough stars
or whatever

Each MV gets a "nugu alert rating" which is a
measure of the total condensed nuguness in the MV's running time -
qualities that enhance nuguness are lack of YouTube hits, lack of money
spent on the MV and song, and general "where are they now?" vibe even
though the artist in question may still be very much active

Good
or bad, I think it's worth highlighting nugus for ideological reasons.
For every new group that debuts on a TV show that nobody gives a fuck
about, there's ten or fifty or a hundred other groups on tiny little
labels that are so much smaller that they struggle to even get on the damn TV show. Do you know how much competition there is for these things? So much in fact, that label staff and artists grease and kiss ass all fucking day
just to secure and maintain those 3 little minutes. Combine that with
the fact that there's not exactly much of a live performance culture for
pop music outside of TV shows and you realise that these crappy low
budget MVs are the only chance that a lot of groups get to even exist in
the public eye at all. The least you can do is watch the fucking
things and attempt to extract some semblance of entertainment value
before they get consigned to the dustbin of popular culture.

But
there's thousands of these things! Which ones to watch? Ahhh... that's
where Kpopalypse comes in to help you out, so let's get started with
Episode One!

FRESH BOYZ - "KOALA"

I
guess as an Australian I have to kick things off with a song about
everyone's favourite local marsupial. Some little-known facts about
koalas:

They may look cute but they are smelly, unfriendly, untameable creatures that scratch and piss everywhere, plus they fucking hate you

Although an endangered species on the mainland, on Kangaroo Island they're in plague proportions and cause a lot of damage to plantlife, and no-one knows what to do about it because it's illegal to kill them

The word "koala" is pronounced with three syllables, e.g "ko-A-la", not "KWA-la" like Fresh Boyz are doing it in this song

You
won't give a shit about any of that stuff though once the video
starts. The video director wisely keeps Fresh Boyz themselves mostly
absent from the visual side of the proceedings, devoting the large
majority of the screen time to some model who makes up for the obvious
starvation-level MV budget with underboob-flashing to rival those FX Girl videos. I don't know who she is but I've seen her in MVs before
(and I'd really like to know her name by the way - surely some of
you k-nerds know so don't be shy and tell me and I'll edit this post) -
she's never looked quite like this, though. I can't remember if it was
Russ Meyer or Roger Corman who said "breasts are the best special
effects" but whoever it was, the creative video which explores many
different ways to almost show nipple certainly makes this ear-shredding
reggaeton-inspired k-pop dance flatulence a lot more tolerable. For a
video with so much skin showing to get so few hits in an era when sexy
concepts are raking in the cash and popularity is a remarkable
achievement of nugudom.

This
kiddy hip-hop assault from 2012 is as cringeworthy and eardrum-raping
as you'd expect, but for such an unpopular video it contains quite a few
redeeming features that I didn't expect:

They can actually dance pretty good for their age

They can rap better than CL

No awkward sexualisation in the style of Little PSY, thank the lord

*shudders
in horror* IT'S NOT CUTE, IT'S WRONG. If you ever need evidence that
males bear the brunt of creepy inappropriate sexualisation in k-pop,
here it is - and thank fuck the MV creators didn't make Valiant do
something similar. All you people whining about AOA and Gain and Hyuna
and whoever else with the sexy concepts... get your priorities
straight. Getting Little PSY to put his fucking shirt back on is more
important than your futile attempts to stifle healthy adult female
sexuality. But enough about you pretending to be a feminist while
actually being completely misogynist, and more about Valiant's
awful-but-probably-not-the-most-awful-thing-ever kiddie raps.

Of
course there's nothing in the world more hip-hop in the entire universe
than performing carefully choreographed dance routines in front of a
graffiti mural background (just ask 2NE1), so that's mainly what
Valiant's video consists of. The main expenditure for this video seems
to have been printing those t-shirts, the bus fare to the park and
spending half a day putting little paper windmills in the ground... but
that's okay because that just makes it look even more ghetto and broke
which means it's more like hip-hop, right?

Okay, maybe not.

YouTube hits at time of writing: 3609
Notable
attribute: has annoying kiddy rap and is basically rubbish but is still
more listenable than Little PSY and CL's solo plus the last few 2NE1
comebacks
Nugu alert rating: very high

CHERRY KIM ft. SNK - SECRET L.O.V.E.

(look at that still shot - they've copy-pasted the same actor because they couldn't afford more than one machinegun or set of SWAT clothes)

You'd
have to be living under a pop-culture rock not to notice that zombies
have really advanced heavily in popularity lately, turning up in all
sorts of places from movies to MVs and TV shows with increasing
regularity. You can barely move for zombie computer games over the
last few years, and there's plenty of TV shows and movies dedicated to
our shuffling drooling friends (no, not Korean netizens, our OTHER
shuffling drooling friends). Long gone are the days when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was the only zombie-themed MV on the block, with plenty of zombie MVs from allsortsofgenres and in k-pop T-ara and 4minute have both been getting in on the zombie act.

So what's the reason for this sudden surge in zombie popularity? Well, it all started with the classic zombie movies from the 60s,
and the reason why zombies have been a popular choice ever since for
someone wanting to make a horror film is simple - zombies are cost-effective. Think about it:

Nowhere
is this better demonstrated than in the MV for Cherry Kim and SNK's
grating earsore "Secret L.O.V.E.". The budget here is so stretched that
they couldn't even afford shotgun blanks, and opt to use cheap-ass
superimposed CGI to fire most of the shots... plus they even recycle one
of the BarBarBar locations:

I
guess it's where all the nugus are allowed to go to shoot their stuff
without paying site rental (remember nobody gave a fuck about Crayon Pop
besides me and three other people when BarBarBar was being filmed). A
thousand nugus have probably danced on those coloured tiles.

25 comments:

You should do a nugu alert for f(x), because according to fangirls thy are the most underrated and unappreciated group in K-Pop. These poor special snowflakes only have just over 55 million view for this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8I8QGFA1oM

Heh. It's kind of true, considering how long they've been around and with one of the Big 3. f(x) seems to be SM's stepchild that they keep in the attic and apparently not important enough for the fandom to be given an official name.

f(x) is one of the most high teir grops in k-pop without putting in nearly enough effort as the other groups under SM. SM doesn't need to work them like slave prostitutes because the other groups do that already. Who gives a fuck about a fanbase name. Its means absolutely nothing other than all of their delusional, idiot fans who belong in a cage are united under one label, as with every other fandom ever. I guess f(x) being mistreated by SM could make for a kinda lame running joke but anyone who takes it seriously open their fucking eyes.

Btw, love that pic of T-ara in uniform. Having fantasies about being arrested for being a naughty boy and then brutally beaten while handcuffed and then having my body cavities searched by Eunjung and Qri, while Jiyeon looks stares into my eyes with her one eye and spits in my face.

According to soompi the girl's name of the Koala MV is "Huh Kkot Bun Hong". And I gotta say I love Koala. It's a great song, though I am disappointed that Ceejay and Kwon are so few in the MV, though the underboobs are nice to look/fap at so I'm not even mad.